This isn't that amazing. Plenty of leftist/liberal/Marxist/anti-Bush-and-the-Republicans critics at the time, and even before Bush became President, assumed that Bush and the conservatives would want to run amok in the Mid-East, esp in Iraq first, and would try to create the latest Hitler/Satan/Saddam as an excuse to do so. Since Saddam wasn't enough of a threat for the public to go along with an invasion, Bin Laden being terrorist No. 1 at the time would be the first choice that a conspiracist would think of, esp since the CIA once worked with him.